When a new reader comes to your blog and likes what they see, they'll probably stick around for a while and take a look at your most recent posts. After they hit up your about page they just might browse your archives to see what you've written in the past. Your regular readers might also go back and dig through your old posts to see what they missed before they were readers too.

So what about these old posts? Have you looked at them lately? What sort of shape are they in? What were you thinking when you wrote that post about Underwater Basket Weaving earlier this year?

It could be well worth your time to go back and take a look at some of your previous posts, especially if you've been blogging for a while. Here's a short list of things to consider updating on some of those old posts in your archives – the ones that are doing nothing but standing around, pulling out gray hairs and checking for spinach in their teeth when they think no one is watching.

Typos and errors

Even the best proof reader misses the occasional typo. If you find yourself at an old post and you notice a typo or grammatical error, it's still worth your time to edit that post and fix it now, even weeks or months later. Your regular readers saw your post and that mistake in all its glory, but you can still save yourself the raised eyebrow of a new reader from the misuse of there, their or their or that mispelled misspelled word that spell check caught but you still missed.

The more you write, the better your writing gets

If you've been blogging for a while – even if it's only been a few months – chances are your writing skills have improved. Take a look at some of your old posts to see if the "new you" might do things a little bit differently now than you did back then.

The longer you blog, the more writing styles you're exposed to

Along the same lines of improved writing skills, your writing style has probably changed for the better too. As you read more blogs and write more posts, you start using new techniques that you've picked up along the way. Your older posts can benefit from what you know now but didn't know then.

Remove or update old links

Maybe a site you linked to in an old post no longer exists, or the page has moved. If you've got a post with external links, consider that those links might need to be updated.

Your search engine optimization skills have improved

At the beginning of your blogging career you may not have even known what SEO stood for. Maybe you are now a pro at turning your posts into Google magnets or you now know the importance of page titles. Go ahead and go back to some of your early posts to add some keyword rich text. Add some new links to the pages you've created or new posts you've written since that older post was first published. Your old posts deserve Google's attention as well – go ahead and give them the SEO love and affection that you show all your new posts now.

Updated content is good for SEO

Search engines pay attention to revision dates and like fresh content. You can give your old posts a search engine boost by spending a little time on them and revamping even some minor details.

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A little help from a plugin for Wordpress users

So you've got your Best Of page up and running and you're sending readers to posts that you're really proud of. But what about the rest of your content?  What about these old posts that you've just spent some time updating?  Posts that readers might end up at if they decided to dig through your archives or might come to from a search engine, but aren't exactly "Best Of" page worthy?

With a little help from a plugin, you can easily bring some of these older posts into the lime light for both new and old readers alike with related links at the end of every post.  Some Wordpress themes have this functionality built in, but if yours doesn't the Simple Tags plugin can do this for you. This plugin uses tags to generate a list of related posts, giving readers an opportunity to read other posts you have written in the past that have been marked with the same tag or tags.

Once you've got this plugin set up it, it can easily get you a few more page views that you might not have otherwise gotten.  These related links can also be a great way for you to spot some older posts that you might have forgotten about.  It can also be some motivation to go back and see if these posts need to be updated or improved knowing your readers just might be following those links to old posts!

Don't completely forget about your old content.  With a little attention your old posts you can help keep your readers interested in your blog and can bring in more traffic and new readers too.